Weight-loss shelf winner

SALT LAKE CITY — “Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels continues to dominate flab on the small screen and at the diet shelf, too. Last month’s NBC mid-season premier captured 9 million viewers, up 14% from its previous season end, according to published reports. And Jillian Michaels diet aids garnered $20.8 million, up 273.7%, for the 52 weeks ended Dec. 26, 2010, according to SymphonyIRI Group data across food, drug and mass (excluding Walmart).

And now the “biggest loser” — at least among women — Ashley Johnston is teaming with Rite Aid around the chain’s Rite Weight Plan. Johnston will be promoting her BL Body collection of shape wear, available exclusively at Rite Aid, as part of a national radio tour.

DME: Pressure is on to give aging boomers simplicity

Walgreens generated quite the fanfare in January when it announced free blood-pressure screenings across its pharmacies and Take Care Clinics on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.”

And the timing couldn’t be more perfect — the oldest of the baby boomer generation reach birthday No. 65 in 2011, which means some 10,000 seniors will be celebrating retirement age every day from now through the next 19 years. And though Oprah still is some 10 years away from celebrating her own 65th birthday, she’s still about the most well-known baby boomer in media. Raising awareness through her voice very well could make the silent killer silent no longer.

Age 65 also happens to be the age that many seniors are advised by their doctors to begin testing their blood pressure regularly at home, though that’s beginning to change. “Baby boomers are not waiting for the doctor anymore,” noted John Winegardner, VP sales at Omron. Boomers are becoming more proactive about preventive health care, he said.

According to the latest market research, today’s seniors are looking for simplicity in their pressure monitors. In order to address that consumer need, Omron recently repackaged its entire line so that it is more intuitive — the entry upper-arm unit teases out three key features in what now is called the “3 series.” Similarly, the high-end offering spells out 10 key benefits.

The article above is part of the DSN Category Review Series. For the complete DME/Diagnostics Buy-In Report, including extensive charts, data and more analysis, click here.

Online glucosamine/chondroitin provider advised to discontinue claims

NEW YORK — The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus on Friday recommended that online distributor Supple Beverages discontinue a wide range of advertising claims for its Supple liquid glucosamine/chondroitin supplement, including weight-loss claims and speed-of-action claims.

In addition, Supple Beverages charged that the mainstream glucosamine/chondroitin products are “fake, low quality, [have] ineffective dosages, [do] not have in [them] what is claimed on the label or [come] from unproven sources.” Supple sourced the National Institutes of Health article published “recently” in the New England Journal of Medicine, and added that the “information has been suppressed. This is the largest billion-dollar American fraud of our generation.”

The NAD recommended that the advertiser discontinue its inaccurate claims disparaging glucosamine and chondroitin products in general. In addition, the NAD recommended that the advertiser modify the claim that “the active agents in Supple are prescribed by medical doctors as a first-line standard of care for joint suffering relief all around the world,” to clarify that the “active agents” referred to are glucosamine and chondroitin, and further, that the medical doctors prescribing them are in “other countries,” as these supplements are not sold by prescription in the United States.

Further, the NAD recommended that the advertiser take care to avoid conveying a message that the ingredients in Supple are approved by the Food and Drug Administration at pharmaceutical or prescription strength. The claim that “our chondroitin comes from the only company in the world that can make a pharmaceutical grade chondroitin” still is on the company’s site.

The NAD found that the comparative claim, “Supple uses the highest strength of glucosamine and chondroitin that is highly regulated and sold as natural joint rebuilding agents in over 40 countries,” similarly was unsupported, and the agency recommended that the claim be discontinued.

According to the NAD, Supple represented that it permanently has discontinued many of the challenged claims, though on Monday many of those claims still were accessible at SuppleBodies.com/cause.php, including the inaccurate claim that “no federal agency is checking to make sure that what is stated on a label is in a product.”

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